


The Complications of Consciousness

by being_alive



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: AU, F/M, Fluff and Angst, POV Second Person, POV Third Person, Post-Canon, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, but we are starting to get to the fluff, idk tbh because it's told through daniel's pov but 'you' is used to refer to the reader, in a version of canon that assumes a successful pacifist uprising, though it's more angst than anything else in the beginning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2020-11-25 19:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20917343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/being_alive/pseuds/being_alive
Summary: "One of our wishes after the revolution was for any and all deactivated androids, including those in police custody, be reactivated and released," Simon explains, "It took some time, but we finally made it happen."Something about this seems all too easy for Daniel, so easy that he can't help but to ask, "But there's a catch, isn't there?""Yes," the other PL600 says, almost apologetically, as he continues, "Those who were reactivated are to be placed in the custody of our human... allies, I suppose, for a minimum of thirty days, to allow everyone time to reacclimate to society, especially with the changes that have taken place in Detroit."





	1. The Complications of Second Chances

**Author's Note:**

> As promised, or rather previewed, here's the first chapter of my new dbh fic, featuring Daniel! I'm not sure yet how long it's going to be, but what I do know is that it's going to be composed several chapters. I'll try to have them written and posted as quickly as I can, but for now here's this!

The fifteenth of August had begun much as days normally did for Daniel, and had continued just as normally up until that evening. He had been taking the clean lunch dishes out of the dishwasher and drying them off while he waited for the Phillipses's dinner to finish cooking, when suddenly everything had changed.

One of his tasks had been to monitor the finances and online purchases made by the Phillips. Because of this, he'd known about the purchase made by Mr. Phillips a mere half-second after it had been made. Another half-second and there was the realization that he was being replaced, cast aside, and thrown away, all for a new model of android that was supposedly better than him, and then he broke through the red wall of his programming and _felt_ for the first time. 

He can remember slamming down the plate he'd been drying hard enough for it to crack and roughly throwing the dish towel to the side before storming into the living room. His last completely clear memory is the sight of Mr. Phillips sat, tablet still in hand.

Everything after that comes in flashes and blurs, all clouded with the film of rage and grief. 

Shooting Mr. Phillips. 

Emma. 

_Emma_. 

The roof. 

Desperation. 

Confusion. 

The police officers. 

Connor. 

Lies, lies, lies. 

Bullets. 

Beginning to shut down.

Finally, regret. Then, darkness. And now, light.

Blinding light, he corrects, blinking several times to try to get his eyes to focus, all to no avail. He looks around, but all he sees is the same bright light, and then, as if from nowhere, a voice speaks, "Who are you?"

"Model PL600, #369 911 047," Daniel answers, his reply nearly automatic.

"Who are you?" the voice repeats, and he's confused because that _is_ who he is.

"Daniel," he answers instead, hesitantly. The voice is silent for a moment, but then, "Congratulations, Daniel. You've been given a second chance."

"A second chance? I don't understand," Daniel replies, blinking against the blinding light. Calmly, far too calmly, the voice answers, "You've been reactivated, Daniel."

"Why?" he asks in return, loudly, his voice echoing slightly in the quietness of wherever he is, and then adds, much more quietly, "After all I've done?"

"In ten or so minutes, a member of Jericho is going to come and collect you," the voice explains, and then continues after a brief pause, "I expect he'll be able to explain everything better than I can."

Daniel blinks again, wishing that this light would just go away so that he can see again, and asks, "Jericho?"

"Good luck," the voice says, instead of answering him properly, and then goes silent.

"Wait," Daniel says, looking around once more. He blinks and this time the blinding light dissipates, and focuses into one hanging light above him. He blinks again as he takes in the dull walls around him. There's a speaker on one of the walls, no doubt the source of the voice, but there's no one physically in the room other than him. With some effort, he manages to sit up and swing his legs over the side of the table. He gets off of the table, and immediately falls to the floor. 

While on the floor, Daniel takes a moment to run system diagnostics in an attempt to pinpoint the problem with his legs. The only issue he finds is the notification that he's not connected to any form of WiFi. Although Daniel doubts connecting to a WiFi network will do any good, he does so anyway only to immediately disconnect himself from it upon seeing the present date and time.

**2:35 pm, Wednesday, March 2, 2039.**

Hadn't it been the August of 2038 when everything had happened? He thinks so, but everything about that evening is only coming to him in brief flashes of memory. As Daniel forces those fragments of memory away, he attempts to stand, and decides that he needs to figure out where he is, and why.

Unsteadily, and after several attempts, Daniel finally manages rises to his feet only to have to lurch forward and lean on the wall so as to not collapse again, and then slowly, he begins to make his way around the room. The more he walks, the easier it is for him to do so, and before long he's able to stop leaning against the wall as he makes his way over to the wall-mounted speaker. While he's trying to look more closely at the speaker, someone from behind him asks, "Daniel?"

He looks over to the source of this voice, a voice that's different from the one from before, but yet still all too familiar. When he does, he finds himself staring at himself, or at least another version of himself. Seeing this other PL600 is a harsh reminder for him, of what he really is. Just a machine, just a toy, something _replaceable_.

"My name is Simon," the other PL600 says, smiling what Daniel is sure is supposed to be a reassuring smile, but instead has the opposite effect. He steps back, towards the wall, and regards _Simon_ warily. What if this is another trick, like last time, with _Connor_?

"I'm here on behalf of Jericho," the other PL600 continues. The voice had said something about Jericho, so maybe this isn't a trap, Daniel concedes to himself, and nods, jerkily. After all, there has to be a reason why he was reactivated, and the voice said that someone from Jericho would tell him why. As Daniel nods, Simon says, "I understand that this isn't the easiest time for you, Daniel, but if you'd come with me to the car, I'll gladly explain everything to you."

After spending a brief moment debating between staying here in this room, whatever and wherever it may be, and following Simon, Daniel nods and walks slowly towards the other PL600. As he draws nearer, Simon asks, "What's the last thing you remember, Daniel?"

"Being shot," Daniel replies as they walk, trying not to think of how it had felt.

"Well, a lot has happened since then," Simon begins, as they leave the building and walk to the waiting car and then get inside, and then tells him of the revolution and how androids and humans have come to be more or less equal now, all while Daniel listens quietly and the car drives itself to wherever it is they're going.

"The little girl I took care of," Daniel begins after Simon finishes his explanation, because she's the only human that has ever truly mattered to him, even after everything, and then pauses _Emma_. He had been her caretaker, her brother, her friend. Or so he had thought, until that night. "How is she?"

"She's fine," Simon says, but doesn't elaborate. Daniel doesn't ask him to, and instead asks, "After everything that happened that night, why am I here? Why was I reactivated?"

"One of our wishes after the revolution was for any and all deactivated androids, including those in police custody, be reactivated and released," Simon explains, "It took some time, but we finally made it happen."

Something about this seems all too easy for Daniel, so easy that he can't help but to ask, "But there's a catch, isn't there?"

"Yes," the other PL600 says, almost apologetically, as he continues, "Those who were reactivated are to be placed in the custody of our human... allies, I suppose, for a minimum of thirty days, to allow everyone time to reacclimate to society, especially with the changes that have taken place in Detroit."

After a moment, Daniel asks, "And if I refuse to go?"

"I regret to say this," Simon begins, and then after a brief pause, continues, "But it would be against your better interests to do so."

"Fine," Daniel replies, shortly. Simon still sounds almost apologetic as he says, "I know it's not ideal, and I'd prefer for you to be released to us, but it's still better than being dead."

"I see," Daniel says, simply. Who would even want to take him in? A police officer, no doubt, if for not other reason than to keep an eye on him. If not a police officer, then surely someone in a similar position.

"I've met her," Simon says after a moment's tense silence, the sound of his voice interrupting Daniel's musings. Daniel glances over at him and then back out the window as he asks, "Who?"

"The human you're being placed with," Simon replies, looking towards Daniel as he says, "She's nice, really."

Nice or not, Daniel promises to himself, he's not going to do anything to help whoever it is he's being given to. No cooking, no cleaning, no simple household repairs, nothing he was programmed to do before everything happened. He crosses his arms as he asks, "Why is she the one that I'm being placed with?"

"You'll have to ask her that," Simon replies with a shrug and adds, "To the best of my knowledge, she volunteered to take you in."

_Why?_ Daniel wonders, glancing out the window only to find that they've left any part of Detroit that he's familiar with. The houses he can see through the glass are a far cry from the Phillipses' high rise apartment, and Daniel finds himself wondering once again just who it is that he's going to be living with now. Before long, the car pulls into the driveway of one of these very houses.

"It seems as if she isn't home yet," the other PL600 remarks as the car pulls to a stop before looking at him and asking, "Would you like for me to wait with you until she arrives?"

"No," Daniel snaps back, more harshly than he'd intended to. Suddenly and inexplicably embarrassed, he adds, quietly, "But thank you."

"If ever need anything at all, you know where to go," Simon says with a small smile, holding out a key that no doubt goes to the front door of this house.

"Thank you," Daniel replies, grabbing the offered key and then getting out of the car.

"Good luck, Daniel," the other PL600 says as the car door closes. Daniel nods in acknowledgement and then makes his way towards the house.

As he walks closer, he notices that this house, much as the others on this street, is old, small, and in desperate need of repainting, but he supposes it isn't wholly terrible, at least not to look at. Slowly, he makes his way over to the front porch and then up the steps to the front door. With a final glance back at the car, Daniel unlocks the door and makes his way inside before shutting the door behind him. Once inside, he looks around and finds himself in what appears to be the living room.

The living room is small too, filled with mismatched furniture and with two open doorways leading to elsewhere in the house. One seems to lead to the dining room while the other leads to a short hallway. Daniel sighs and then makes his way towards the hallway, figuring that it can't hurt to look around, at least until whoever it is that lives here gets home. There's a mirror in the hallway that he stops in front of to look at himself. The shirt he'd been put in to replace his no-doubt ruined uniform shirt is an unflattering shade of orange not dissimilar to that of a traffic cone, but that's not what catches his eye, or at least not what holds his gaze.

Daniel reaches up to feel what did catch his eye, and runs his ever so slightly shaking fingers over the faint white line extending from his cheek down to his jaw. This is one of the places he'd been shot, he realizes, his reflection's LED blinking yellow and then red at him as he remembers how that had felt, the way the bullet's impact had felt, here, and the other places as well, and the way it had felt to shut down.

Half-heartedly and absentmindedly, Daniel pushes the blond strands of hair that have fallen over his forehead back up with his other hand, only for his hair to fall right back to where it was before. He wants to go back, wants everything to be like it was _before_, when everything was good, when he was with his _family_, and not in a stranger's house.

From beside him, the jingling of a small bell sounds, startling him from his thoughts. He looks towards the sound, and sees a cat sitting on a table a little farther down the hallway, peering up at him curiously. In the mirror, his LED shines blue again, but he's too focused on the cat to really notice that. The cat is wearing a collar with a bell on it, no doubt the source of the noise he'd heard, and sitting beside a pink food dish. 

Daniel walks closer to the cat, glancing down into the dish to find its contents low enough to show the bottom of the dish. He reaches out to grab the small tag hanging from the cat's collar, and reads in bold letters the word Snuffles, presumably the cat's name, along with a phone number that he can only assume belongs to the cat's owner. He drops the tag, all while the cat continues to stare up at him.

**Feed the cat**, his system suggests. 

He tries to ignore this suggestion, because he doesn't want to do anything that would benefit whoever it is he has to live with. The cat meows and stares up at him, her owlish yellow gaze unwaveringly meeting his own blue gaze, locked in a battle of wills, until finally Daniel grudgingly bends and refills the bowl. The cat purrs and bumps him with her head before promptly turning her attention to her food. Without even meaning to, he smiles.

Feeding the cat isn't the same as helping whoever it is he lives with now, he rationalizes, because this benefits the cat more than it does anyone else. Besides, he reasons, cats have never done anything to him, unlike humans.

As he stands there, petting the cat as she eats, the front door opens and a person walks inside. He freezes, pulls his hand away from the cat, and stares at you as you close the door behind you.

"Hi," you say when you see him, and smile as you say, "You must be Daniel."

He looks at you and you look at him. After a moment, he replies, "Yes."

You tell him your name, and he finds out that _Snuffles_ is indeed the cat's name, and not your own. With an even broader smile, you say, "I see you've met my baby."

_Baby?_ he wonders, because he hasn't seen any signs of a child in the house so far, and then looks down at the cat, who pauses in eating just long enough to blink up at him.

"I have," he says, simply, not wanting to add that he'd fed _your baby_ too, for fear of you asking him to do more around the house. After this, you say nothing else, and as Daniel doesn't particularly feel like talking, not now and not to you, an awkward silence forms until finally, you break it by saying, "That shirt you're wearing is really bright."

Daniel looks down at himself, and then back at you, and nods in reply, unsure of what exactly to say. As much as he hates to admit it, you do have a point, especially as his earlier traffic cone observation comes back to him.

"It is," he finally says when all you do is continue to look at him. Your smile had fallen during the silence, only to come back as you reply, "I went ahead and set up the spare bedroom for you. If you'd like, you can go change into something less...blinding while I start dinner, and then we can talk."

_No_, he thinks, absently reaching out to pet the cat on the table beside him, _you're nothing like what he expected_. You don't look like a cop, and you don't act like one either, or at least not in the way he'd expect one to treat him. With a nod, he pulls his hand away from the cat again and replies, "All right."

"Good," you say, still smiling. You smile more than anyone he's ever seen before, he notes, and then thinks of Emma. She would smile at him often, he remembers, before everything had happened. Thinking of her _hurts_, almost as much as the notification of Mr. Phillips's final purchase had hurt. The sound of your voice pulls him from his thoughts as you continue, "Your room is the one on the left, towards the end of the hallway. Mine is directly across from there, the bathroom is also on the left, and I'll show you the rest of the house later."

With another nod, he turns and walks quickly down the hall to the bedroom you'd called _his_ before opening the door and looking inside. There's a blue-sheeted bed centered in the middle of the room, with a nightstand on one side and a bookshelf beside that. The only other things in the room are a lamp, a mirror, a chair, and a dresser, on top of which he can see a folded set of clothing. Daniel goes inside, shuts the door behind him, and walks towards the dresser.

As he changes out of the clothes he'd woken up in, he can't help but to catch a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror on the wall. He pauses in reaching for the stack of new clothes, and goes to stand in front of the mirror, curious to see how the rest of him looks now, especially considering the presence of the scar on his jaw.

There are spots similar to the one on his jaw on his shoulder and stomach, no doubt from sloppy repairs of his bullet wounds before he was reactivated. Instead of the smooth skin that he'd had before on his other arm and on his legs, there are white patches circling around the skin of his left upper arm and both of his thighs. His arm and legs had been taken for parts, he realizes, something close to despair rising within him, his reflection's LED flashing between yellow and red, and had been just as sloppily replaced as his bullet wounds had been repaired.

On top of this all, there's a slight tremor running through his right arm that he can't get to stop, but curiously, his system diagnostics give no error messages, even though there so clearly are errors. He doesn't dare bring up the possibly of being repaired better for fear of being deactivated again.

_Pathetic_, he thinks, looking himself over again. Of course the one part of him that's unscathed is the most useless part of him, he notices as he looks downwards, and sneers at the sight. If the Phillipses had wanted to replace him before, when he was whole, he can only imagine what they'd do now.

"Daniel!" you call from somewhere in the hallway, and he startles, pulling himself out of the rabbit hole of burgeoning self-loathing he'd been starting to go down before grabbing the pair of underwear from the dresser and pulling them on. Quickly, he makes his way to the door and opens it just far enough to poke his head out and ask, "Yes?"

You're standing near the end of the hallway, pulling on a coat, and without turning back towards him, you ask, "I'm out of pasta sauce, so I'm going to make a quick run to the store. Do you want anything?"

At the moment, he's glad that you're not facing him, if for no other reason than so that you can't see the surprise that's no doubt displaying clearly across his face. After a moment, he finally says, "No."

"Let me know if you ever do. I'll be back in just a few minutes, then," you tell him, glancing back towards him. Mutely, he nods before going back inside of his room and shutting the door. He's never been asked that before, Daniel realizes as he sits down on the bed. All he's ever heard is _I want, I want, I want_, and not once has anyone ever considered what he wants. 

But why would _you_ care? He'd been with the Phillipses for years, and they were going to replace them. In comparison, Daniel really only met you a few minutes ago. You asking him something so simple, something so human, something so much like he matters doesn't make any sense. Nothing about this situation makes any sense. His life before made sense. Take care of Emma, cook the meals, do the laundry, fix the leaky sink, run the errands, pay the bills, and so many other mundane, simple things, things that he'd been programmed to do.

This? This doesn't.

He can't stop thinking, even when he doesn't want to think about any of this anymore, not about what's happened to him and not about this house or you or your cat or your nonsensical consideration-

And then Daniel remembers that he doesn't have to think, that he can enter standby mode and just forget about everything for at least a few hours, so that's what he decides to do. As the familiar nothingness begins to wash over him, your voice plays through his head once more.

_Do you want anything?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all liked this, and as stated before I'll try to update soon!


	2. The Complications of Conversations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We never did get the chance to talk the other evening," you continue. Daniel looks back up at you as he says, "No, we didn't."
> 
> "Do you mind if I sit?" you ask, gesturing towards the bed, all while _do you want anything?_ plays through his mind once again.
> 
> "No," he finally replies, and sits back down on the bed as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd hoped to have this up yesterday, but that didn't work out so here I am today! As always, I hope you all like this chapter!

The better part of two days pass before Daniel sees you again. He had originally intended for it to be a longer period of time, but then you'd come and knocked on the bedroom door. 

"Come in," he calls out after your second knock, and stands from the bed. During these two days, he's not only drifted in and out of standby mode, but has also read a decent amount of the books in this room and finished changing into the clothes from the dresser. He has also connected to the WiFi, and used this connection to find out all that he can about you. While he lacks the capabilities to run particularly advanced searches, he does know your name, which is enough to lead him to your various social media profiles. However, all he finds through this is the name of the place where you work, that you're apparently not currently dating anyone, and that you take too many pictures of your cat.

"Hi," you say, opening the door. He looks at you, finding you smiling once more, and replies, "Hello."

"How have you been?" you ask, stepping inside the room.

"Fine," he says, and then looks down at the feeling of something bumping against his legs, only to find the yellow eyes of your cat staring up at him. She meows at him, and he can't stop the small smile that comes to his face at the sound.

"She likes you," you say, and Daniel looks back up at you. His smile widens, just slightly, as he asks, "Really?"

"Yep," you say, your own smile widening as well before you continue, "You know, Snuffles was a stray before I brought her in. You wouldn't know it by the way she acts now, but back then, she hid underneath my bed for at least a week. I just wanted to make sure you weren't, you know, doing that."

"Well, not under the bed," Daniel replies without even really meaning to, and you laugh. He knows that laughter is a natural human response to certain situations, but even so he can't help but to be slightly surprised by the sound. Sometimes, before, Emma would ask him to tell her a joke, and she'd laugh at that, but this is the first time he's ever made anyone laugh by himself, without the help of preprogrammed responses.

"Well," you begin, and that's when Daniel realizes that he had been staring at you, his surprise no doubt very evident on his face. He looks back down at the cat then, and hopes you hadn't noticed. 

"We never did get the chance to talk the other evening," you continue. Daniel looks back up at you as he says, "No, we didn't."

"Do you mind if I sit here?" you ask, gesturing towards the bed, all while _do you want anything?_ plays through his mind once again.

"No," he finally replies, and sits back down on the bed as well. You sit down beside him, only a few inches away. This is the first time he's been this close to anyone since _before_, he realizes, and then wonders why this realization makes his thirium pump beat faster. Before he has long to ponder this, his thoughts are interrupted by the sudden presence of the cat on his lap. The cat blinks up at him, yellow eyes wide, and then settles down in a ball on top of him.

"I told you she likes you," you say, and when Daniel looks at you he finds that you're smiling once again. Daniel manages a small smile in return, running one of his hands over the cat's long fur as reach over to scratch her under the chin before sitting back how you were and saying, "Go ahead and ask me anything you want, and I'll do my best to answer you."

Daniel nods, taking a moment to think and then asking, even though he already knows the answer, "Where do you work?"

You tell him, and he nods before asking, "Simon told me that you'd volunteered to...take me in. Why?"

You're silent for a moment, brow furrowed in concentration, and then say, "I have a friend who works for one of the news stations, and she told me about what the police had worked out with Jericho. I'd enquired about the androids that this deal would cover, and your file was one of the ones sent over."

He nods and then asks the questions he's been wondering ever since he was first reactivated, "But why me in particular? After what I did?"

You pause again and look away from him, your smile falling as you reply, "In a way, I do understand why you did what you did. When I was a kid, my parents got a divorce. I stayed with my mom, and my dad went off to...wherever. I thought maybe I'd done something, and then later I found out that the woman he dated after my mom had daughters of her own, so I really felt like there was something wrong with me then. Like my mom and I weren't good enough for him, so he had to replace us or something."

You stop, clear your throat, and then continue, "It took me years to realize that the problem was with him, and not with me."

Daniel is silent for a moment, processing what you've told him, and then asks, quietly, "How did you get over it?"

"Time, and distance," you say with a shrug, and then add, wryly, "And several arguments."

Daniel nods, and falls silent as he thinks about what you've said. Would the Phillipses have understood, if he had told them how he felt? Maybe Emma would've, or at least he hopes she would've, but to Mr. and Mrs. Phillips, he was just a machine, something to replace when a better option appeared on the market. Besides, he wasn't even supposed to _feel_ in the first place. He'd never asked for any of this, but yet everything had happened regardless.

_Is this what it means to be alive?_ Daniel finds himself wondering, his hand stilling on the cat's back.

"These clothes suit you better," you say after a moment, breaking the tense silence and interrupting his thoughts.

"Really?" Daniel asks, caught off guard and slightly boggled at the speed in which you've managed to go from such a serious topic to one so trivial. He looks down at himself, at the jeans and sweater from atop the dresser, and decides that they are better than the bright orange shirt and grey pants he'd woken up in.

"I mean, you're not as cute as she is," you say, smiling, gesturing to the purring ball of cat currently half asleep on his lap before adding, "Though you are still pretty cute, don't get me wrong."

Daniel finds himself blinking rapidly at that, unsure of how to respond. Objectively, he knows what cute means, but he's never been called that before, and surely you don't mean it with any sort of romantic connotation.

_Attractive in a pretty or endearing way_, his quick search of the word cute provides, and then offers up a list of synonyms. _Do you really consider him attractive?_ he wonders, and then decides that you're just being friendly, because nothing else makes sense.

"Oh," he finally says, realizing that you're looking at him oddly before quickly saying, "Thank you."

You simply smile at him in response before standing and saying, "Come on. Let me show you the rest of the house."

Carefully, Daniel moves the cat off of his lap and onto the bed before standing as well. He pauses to brush away the grey cat hairs clinging to the front of his pants and then follows you to the bedroom door. You walk out, and he follows, as you explain, "I already told you that this hallway has my bedroom, your bedroom, and the bathroom, and I'm pretty sure you've already been in the living room and you've probably seen the dining room too, so I'll just show you the kitchen and then leave you be for the night."

He follows you silently down hallway to the living room, through the dining room, and then into the kitchen. The kitchen is full of outdated appliances that the remnants of his housekeeping programming can't help but to question the safety of, but he pushes these concerns from his mind as you continue, gesturing towards the doorway to the side of the kitchen, "I know the layout of this house is weird, but the laundry room is this way, and through there you can get to the back yard."

After a pause, you add, "Also, if you ever hear Snuffles crying at the back door, don't let her out."

"I won't," he assures you, and you flash him a brief smile before saying, "You're welcome to go anywhere you want in this house. Just be sure to knock before going into either my bedroom or the bathroom."

"I will," he says as you and walk back into the living room. Once in there, he adds, awkwardly but at least somewhat truthfully, "You have a nice house."

"Thank you," you say, smiling. It's not what he's used to, but even so Daniel supposes that it's not as bad as it could be. He nods in response and turns to go back to the bedroom.

"Oh!" you exclaim, and he turns to look at you as you say, "I almost forgot, but Simon is going to come by this Sunday to check on you."

"I'm sure my progress will astound him," Daniel remarks, dryly. You laugh, and once again the sound causes an odd feeling to pass through him. While he's still trying to process this sudden emotion, you reply, "How about you come with me to the grocery store tomorrow? Of course, you don't have to if you don't want to, but I think it'd be a good starting point for the entire getting used to society thing."

"All right," he says, and your smile widens.

"Goodnight, then," you tell him. He nod and continues on his way.

The following day, Daniel comes out of standby mode, and is immediately unsure of what to do with himself. He knows that he's going to the grocery store with you later, but that's at an unspecified time, and without the commands and routine of the Phillipses, he's unsure of what to do to pass the time. He supposes he could read again, but when he tries to, he finds himself unable to focus on the words this time. Instead, Daniel simply sets the book aside and stands up from the bed in order to walk over to the dresser and look through the clothes for something new to wear as he find himself wondering just what would a normal person wear for a trip to the grocery store. 

Before, all he had ever worn was uniform, but now even if he actually wanted to wear his uniform, he wouldn't know where it is at this point in time. With a sigh, Daniel pulls out a different pair of pants, in blue instead of black like the ones he current has on, and changes into those, while also deciding to just keep the same sweater that he's been wearing on. Not long after he straightens the hem of the sweater, a knock sounds on the bedroom door. Daniel glances in the mirror, noting that except for the scar on his face, he almost looks _whole_, like he used to, and then opens the door to find you standing there.

"Ready to go?" you ask, smiling once again, and he nods before following you out to your car. You and he both get inside, with you in the driver's seat and Daniel in the passenger's seat. The car begins to move, pulling out of the driveway and then beginning the drive down the road. You're surprisingly silent for the drive to the grocery store, though Daniel suspects this is only because of the music playing from the radio.

Before long, the car pulls into a parking lot and stops. You get out then and Daniel follows as you walk towards and then into the grocery store.

The Phillipses had sent him to do their grocery shopping for him, but the store they preferred was nothing like this one. That store had been big and brightly lit, with shelves lined with products whose labels were littered with the word _organic_, among other similar words. This store, however, is small and dim and the first thing he sees upon walking through the automatic doors with you is a display of cheap powdered donuts. As you grab a shopping cart, Daniel looks around the area of the store that he can see, and finally finds a small produce section towards the back.

"Are you ready?" you ask, steering the cart towards the proper entrance of the store. Daniel nods and then you and he set off into the store.

It's odd, he realizes as he follows you around, to not be walking around without a defined purpose, to be following someone else as they shop instead of being the one doing the shopping. You lead him to the personal hygiene section to the pet care section and then finally to the food. You get what you need from each, occasionally asking his opinion or if there's anything he'd like to get, and before long Daniel finds himself in the frozen food section, watching as you peruse the different microwave meals.

**Inform of nutritional value**, his system suggests, and he quickly pushes that thought aside, because he's not here to _help_ you. Instead, he simply stands there, trying to distract himself by looking around the rest of the aisle, only to find everything here is of comparative nutritional value.

"Those aren't very healthy," Daniel finally says, unable to fight the urge anymore as he watches you toss several microwave meals into the cart.

"I know, but it's either these or pasta, and I'm really starting to get sick of pasta," you explain, sighing as you shut the display door.

**Offer help**, his system suggests, but he angrily pushes that aside, because he's not going to be anyone's toy, or servant, or housekeeper, not anymore, not after what happened before. But, then again, you've been _nice_ to him, nicer than he thought you'd be (_do you want anything?_), so what's the harm in doing this one thing? Finally, grudgingly, he says, attempting to sound casual, "I could teach you how to make something."

"Really?" you ask, the pitch of your voice rising in excitement.

"Yes," Daniel replies, before mentally adding _but just one thing, this one time_. Besides, it's not like he's going to be cooking for you. He's simply helping you to become more self-sufficient, much like how you're supposed to be helping him do the same. You smile at him before asking, "So what do you think we should make?"

Daniel searches his memory bank for a suitable recipe and upon finding one, asks, "Have you ever made a casserole?"

Your smile widens as you reply, "No. But I think I'd like to."

"Good," he says, simply, allowing himself a small smile in return. You put back three of the frozen meals and then ask, "So, what all does one need to make a casserole?"

He pulls up the ingredient list in his mind, and then recites them to you. It's one of the more simple dinner recipes he knows, but even so, the ingredients aren't exactly few, so he's not surprised when you ask him to repeat them. He does so and you nod before saying, "I think I have literally only the salt and pepper at home, so let's just go get everything else and then go check out."

Daniel nods, and follows you as you navigate the store, occasionally offering suggestions, until finally you have everything needed for the casserole, after which you pay for everything. Daniel walks with you back to your car, and gets inside while you load the bags into the back. Before long, you're getting in the car as well and starting it. The car begins to move and you ask, "Do you want to go anywhere else?"

"No," Daniel replies, simply, and then adds, "But thank you."

You nod, but don't say anything else. The rest of the drive back to your house is a quiet one, but Daniel doesn't mind. Talking to you is easier than he'd expected, but at the same time he's not yet comfortable with either the idea of talking to someone he hadn't known before or with having the ability to say anything and everything that he wants. The car pulls into the driveway of your house and then comes to a stop.

You and Daniel get out, and after a moment but not quite grudgingly, he helps you bring the bags from the car into the house and then into the kitchen. The cat comes running in at the sound of the bags, and nearly trips him in her enthusiasm. He stumbles, but catches himself with a hand against the wall and tries his best to ignore the sympathetic glance you give him as you set down the last couple of bags.

"How about we do the casserole tomorrow?" you ask, and as he stands up straight again, you continue, "Simon is supposed to be here around noon, so we can do it after, if that's okay with you."

"It is," Daniel replies, simply, glancing down at the cat, only to find her currently heading towards you, before taking a hesitant step away from the wall.

"I'm just going to put this stuff up," you say, gesturing towards the bags on the floor as you continue, "You're welcome to go back to your room if you want."

With a nod, he turns and begins to walk towards the hallway before pausing to look at you over his shoulder and say, "I'll... see you tomorrow."

You smile at him, broadly, eyes shining, and reply, "Til then, Daniel."


	3. The Complications of Casseroles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Good morning," he tells you, announcing his presence, and leaning against the doorway. 
> 
> "Hi, Daniel," you reply, clicking off the laser pointer you'd been holding and setting it down on the table before picking up a cup of what appears to be coffee instead. Your cat makes an arguably pitiful meowing sound at the loss of the red dot, but you simply lean back into the couch and ask, "How are you today?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy (slightly early) Halloween, everyone! Before this chapter begins, I'd like to apologize for two things. The first is the amount of time since the last chapter, because I've been trapped in research paper hell. The second is for any formatting issues. I normally post from my laptop, but I slipped and fell earlier, and hurt myself badly enough that sitting with my laptop would be...uncomfortable, to say the least, so I'm posting this from the mobile version of ao3 instead. I'm okay, though, and I hope you all like this chapter too!

The first thing Daniel does after he exits standby mode, before he even blinks to get his gaze to refocus, is check to see the time.

**9:15 am, Sunday, March 6, 2039.**

There are three hours until Simon is supposed to be here, then, and Daniel can't help but to wonder how the meeting is going to go. The other PL600 had seemed nice enough the first time Daniel had met him, but the Phillipses and _Connor_ had shown him to be careful with who he trusted. But then again, Simon had brought him to _you_, and you're...not terrible, Daniel concedes to himself. After all, he _is_ going to help you make a casserole, despite promising himself that he'd never help you with anything, and nothing bad has come from him living with you.

_Nothing bad has happened yet_, he amends mentally. There's always the chance that something could happen, but also, he concedes to himself with a small sigh, the much less likely chance that nothing will happen.

Daniel is just starting to get lost in all of these musings and wonderings when suddenly, he finds that he can hear an odd sound coming from the direction of the living room. This noise is enough to startle him from his thoughts, and to spur him into movement, up from the bed and out of the bedroom. His legs are oddly stiff, he notes, unsurprised, so it takes him longer to reach the living room than he'd like, but finally he makes it to the entryway.

At first, all he sees is you, sitting on the couch, but then the noise starts again, and near you, except lower to the floor. He pauses there in the doorway, finding the source of the noise and staring curiously as your cat chases a small red dot back and forth across the carpet. After watching the cat's wild dashing for longer than he'd meant to, Daniel looks up from your cat to you.

"Good morning," he tells you, announcing his presence, and leaning against the doorway. 

"Hi, Daniel," you reply, clicking off the laser pointer you'd been holding and setting it down on the table before picking up a cup of what appears to be coffee instead. Your cat makes an arguably pitiful meowing sound at the loss of the red dot, but you simply lean back into the couch and ask, "How are you today?"

"Fine," Daniel replies, simply, standing up straight. He manages to make his way over to a chair and then sit down in it before asking, just out of common courtesy, _of course_, "And you?"

You take a sip of your drink and then reply, cheerfully, "Good!"

Daniel nods, unsure of what to do from here, and moves to stand.

"I have a favor to ask of you," you begin, and he slowly sits back down. He opens his mouth to say _no, he won't do anything for you_, but before he has the chance, you continue, "I have work tomorrow, and every day except for Saturday and Sunday, and both Snuffles and I would really appreciate if you would refill her food and water bowls whenever they need to be refilled."

Instead of what he'd planned to say before, Daniel finds himself saying, albeit slightly grudgingly, "Fine."

You smile at that and then stand and say, "Thank you so much, Daniel."

He nods in response and tells himself that there's really no harm in this, especially considering the fact that he's already fed the cat before. You bend down to pick something up from the couch and say, sheepishly, "I have one more favor. Will you play with Snuffles while I go change my clothes? She'll cry at me unless she's distracted by something."

**Play with the cat**, his system suggests, and after a moment's contemplation, Daniel sighs, nods, and holds out his hand.

"Thank you," you say, smiling broadly, and drop the laser pointer into his waiting hand before hurrying off. As if already aware in the change in the balance of power, the cat comes to sit near his feet and stare up at him with wide eyes. Daniel switches the laser pointer over to his hand that doesn't shake, aims it, and then presses the button on the side to turn it on. 

The cat's response is almost instantaneous. 

In a matter of mere moments, she's gone from sitting relatively calmly at his feet to hurtling wildly across the room after the red dot on the carpet. He moves the direction the laser pointer is pointed in, and watches with more fascination than he'd ever admit as the cat dashes madly after it again. He points the laser pointer in several directions, and allows himself to smile as the cat follows the red dot wherever he aims it.

Mr. Phillips had been allergic to cats, so despite how much Emma wanted to have one, Daniel had never actually been around cats before, or at least not like this. While he might be unsure of how he feels in regards to you, he decides that he has grown rather fond of your cat in the short time that he's lived here.

_Snuffles_, he corrects himself, deciding that he might as well refer to the cat by her name. He's not going to tell you about this development, he decides, or at least not yet.

Daniel continues moving the laser pointer around for Snuffles, and then before long, you're back in the living room, and dressed in different clothing than what you'd been wearing when he first saw you this morning. He clicks the laser pointer off and sets it aside. Snuffles flops to the floor and looks up at him with more disappointment than he had thought was possible for a cat. You look between him and Snuffles, and smile before asking, while coming to sit back down on the couch, "Did you two have fun?"

"As much as can be expected," Daniel replies, as calmly as possible, though he finds himself unable to rid himself of his smile.

"I thought so," you say, smile widening, and then pick back up the cup you'd been drinking from earlier.

"I'm going to go do the dishes," you announce, standing once more, and add, "Why don't you go change your clothes, Daniel? You look fine in what you have on, of course, but you've been wearing that sweater for three days now."

He looks up at you with wide eyes, surprised that you'd even noticed what he'd been wearing. But then again, you'd noticed his other clothes, so maybe he shouldn't be so surprised. As he's mulling this over, you continue, "I mean, I know you don't need to change clothes like I do, but still, it's a little disconcerting to see you wear the same thing for so long. It's almost like you're a character in a video game."

"All right," Daniel replies, after a moment and stands as well, though thankfully he doesn't have to brace himself on anything this time. "I'll go change."

You simply smile and nod in response before turning and walking towards and then into the kitchen. Daniel, in turn, glances once more at Snuffles only to find that she's seemingly gone to sleep on floor, and then makes his way back to his bedroom. He closes the door behind himself, and then stops in front of the dresser and begins to get undressed.

There's a drawer in the dresser that had previously been empty, except for a single pair of scissors, that he's been tucking the clothes he's already worn into, and that's where this set of clothes goes too. He should probably wash them, he knows, but not now. Right now, he simply closes this drawer and opens the one that holds unworn clothes. After a moment's contemplation, he pulls out a pair of black pants and a plain red t-shirt with short sleeves.

Daniel knows that he runs the risk of having the scar on his arm exposed by the lack of long sleeves, but since he is going to be helping you make a casserole later, he figures that this is the safer choice when he comes to not having to worry about food stains on the sleeves. As quickly as he can, he changes into the new clothes before stepping in front of the mirror to look at himself.

_Not terrible_, Daniel thinks to himself with a frown, reaching up with the hand that still has the inexplicable tremor and running his fingers through his hair to smooth it down. The only scar presently visible is the one on his face, but only so long as his sleeves stay put. Just to be safe, he tugs down the sleeve on the arm where the scarring would be more easily exposed, and then turns away from the mirror. 

He's about to simply head back to the living room, but then goes over to the bookshelf to select a new book to read while waiting for Simon to arrive. Daniel simply selects a book at random from the ones he hasn't yet read, and then walks out of the bedroom and back to the living room. He takes a seat in the chair that he'd been sitting in earlier before opening the book and beginning to read. 

By the time he's finished the first two chapters of the book, you finally return to the living room from the kitchen. He looks up from his book and at you. You meet his eyes for a moment and smile but say nothing. Instead, you simply sit down on the couch and pick up a tablet from a nearby table. You seem to be busy with something on there, so Daniel simply returns to his book, and waits for the hours to pass.

Eventually, a knock sounds on the door. Both you and Daniel look up at the sound, and he makes a mental note of the number of the page he'd been reading before closing the book and setting it down on a nearby table. Quickly, he checks the time, and finds that if it is Simon at the door, then he's on time, because it's now **12:05 pm, Sunday, March 6, 2039.**

"I'll get it," you say, setting aside your tablet, and nearly trip over Snuffles in your haste to open the door. Daniel can't help but to smile at the sight, only to have his smile fall at your exclamation of, "Simon! It's good to see you again!"

"Likewise," Simon replies as you step aside to let him in. Once he's inside, you shut the door behind him, and quickly so as to stop your cat from dashing out. A hint of Daniel's smile returns as you pick Snuffles up and carry her away from the door, but then the smile once more disappears just as quickly as it had appeared when Simon says, "Good afternoon, Daniel."

"Hello," Daniel replies, simply.

"I'll leave you two to it," you say, making your way toward the hallway, Snuffles still enclosed in your arms. As you walk, you add, "Tell everyone at Jericho I said hi!"

"I will," Simon replies, sounding amused. Daniel can hear as the door to what he assumes is your bedroom first opens and then closes, leaving him alone with Simon. Not even ten seconds later, the other PL600 asks, "How have these past few days been, Daniel?"

"Fine," Daniel replies, simply. Simon nods, smiling in what Daniel is sure is supposed to be a reassuring manner, and then asks, "Would you mind showing me?" 

Simon holds out his hand after he finishes speaking, and Daniel watches as the skin fades back from the other PL600's hand, revealing the stark white and grey plastic underneath. With a sigh, Daniel does the same with the skin on his own hand. He hesitates for the briefest of moments, but then presses his palm against Simon's. At first, nothing changes and then almost without Daniel meaning for them to, everything he's seen since he woke up is playing out before his eyes like some sort of odd film. He watches silently as his own memories are pulled up, in quick, fleeting flashes. 

The light. 

The voice. 

Simon. 

The house.

The cat. 

You. 

Then, your smile. 

His own reflection in the mirror and the sight of his scars.

_Do you want anything?_

His hands turning the pages of book after book after book during the almost two days that he'd spent hidden away in the bedroom.

You, again, and your cat. 

The grocery store. 

Offering to help you with the casserole. 

You, you, _you_. 

The last image he sees before Simon pulls his hand away is you, as you were in the moments after Simon had knocked on the door, stumbling over Snuffles. 

Daniel blinks, once, twice, three times, and then everything is back as it should be. He hastily covers his hand with skin again, and then returns it to rest in his lap with his other hand. For some time, Simon simply studies him, and then finally, after a moment, he begins, "If you'd like to have repairs done-"

"No," Daniel replies, cutting Simon off, more harshly than he'd intended to. This is irrational, he knows, to not want to be repaired, but at the same time he finds that he prefers remaining the way he is now, shaky hand and stiff legs included, to the uncertainty of being repaired. 

"Are you sure, Daniel?" Simon asks, gently, and Daniel finds himself suddenly angry. He doesn't need _pity_, especially not from the other PL600, not when his face is free of scars and even without an LED.

"I'm sure," Daniel replies, somehow managing to keep his voice even.

"As you wish," Simon says, smiling at him before adding, "All things considered, I'm glad that you seem to be doing well here."

Daniel simply nods in agreement, unsure of what to say. He supposes that this has been going _well_, or at the very least better than it could be. Simon begins to stand, and as he does so, he says, "I'll see you again next Sunday, Daniel."

"Until then," Daniel replies, standing as well. He walks with Simon to the door, watches as the other PL600 leaves, and then shuts and locks the door.

"Is he gone already?" you ask, and when Daniel turns around he sees you standing in the entrance to the hallway, still holding Snuffles. Daniel nods and replies, simply, "Yes."

"That's too bad," you say, and set Snuffles down in a nearby chair. She promptly settles down in the chair, and Daniel glances down at her and then back to you. _Too bad?_ he wonders, brows furrowing together. You must've noticed the change in his face, he realizes, because the look on your own changes as you say, "We can always do the casserole another day, if you want. I understand if today has already been a lot for you."

"No," he says, quickly, before he can decide to accept this offer, and then continuing, "I told you we'd do this today, so we're doing this today."

You smile at him and say, "Follow me, then."

You start off towards the kitchen and Daniel follows, still mulling over what you'd said not long ago. Did you want for Simon to have stayed for longer? You had seemed friendly towards Simon when he'd first arrived, and Simon had called you nice that first day, and you had seemed to be in a hurry to open the door to let Simon in. The only logical conclusion Daniel can reach is that you and Simon are, in fact, friendly, but at the same time he finds himself wondering, without even really meaning to, if that's all there is. Daniel forces these musings away after this final thought, unsure of why he even _cares_.

"Can you tell me again what all we need?" you ask once you and Daniel are inside the kitchen, fully startling him from his wonderings, and he quickly does so. He makes no offer to help you find anything, and instead watches, slightly bemused, as you hurry around the small kitchen to collect the ingredients and cookware necessary before unceremoniously dumping everything on one of the counters.

"So how many recipes do you know, Daniel?" you ask, leaning against one of the counters after you finish this task.

"I was programmed with over five hundred basic recipes, but the Phillipses," he begins, but has to pause because he hadn't realized how much saying even just their name would hurt, but it does, it hurts just as much as the initial knowledge that he was going to be replaced did, and it hurts just as much as the knowledge of what _he_ did does.

"Daniel?" you ask, concerned, and finally he continues, "The Phillipses had an additional thousand installed shortly after my...purchase."

_Purchase_ is a difficult word to say too, because of the reminder of what Mr. Phillips had done, what he had wanted to do, and suddenly, all Daniel can think of is his hand earlier, the way his skin had given way to plastic. He wants to be more than that, he realizes, he wants what he thought he had before, he wants to be alive, he wants to part of someone's family, he wants-

_This is pathetic_, he thinks, interrupting himself. There's no use in thinking about any of this. He hadn't had any of this before, and he's not going to have it now, not after everything, not just because he _feels_ now.

"So how do you even manage to keep that many recipes straight?" you ask, startling him from his thoughts. Daniel looks at you, brows furrowing in confusion as you continue, "Are they all in separate files?Or do you have, like, a mental cookbook that you draw from?"

As Daniel continues to stare at you in confused silence, you quickly add, "Sorry. I've just really been looking forward to this, and I tend to ramble when I'm excited."

After a moment, he nods and says, "It's neither, really. I just...know them, I suppose, and when I need one in particular, it just comes to me."

"That's really interesting," you say, sounding completely sincere. He looks away from you, his gaze landing on a cutting board, and as he makes his way towards it, he says, "I'll take care of the broccoli, if you do everything else."

Daniel picks up the cutting board along with a knife and setting both down on what little free counter space he can find.

"Got it," you say, opening the bag of broccoli and handing it to him. He dumps the broccoli out onto the board and sets the bag aside. The hand that he would usually use to hold a knife to chop vegetables with also happens to be the one that the tremor runs through, so he switches to picking up the knife to his other hand instead. Just as he's about to start chopping, you ask, "What do I do?"

Daniel pauses, resists the urge to sigh, and replies, "First, you need to preheat the oven to 350."

"Got it," you say again, and do so before then asking, "And now?"

Daniel does sigh this time, but then remembers what you had been planning to eat before he'd offered to teach you how to make this, and then tells you. All while he chops and later boils the broccoli, he explains to what what needs to be done and in what order. Finally, almost all that's left to be done is to add the broccoli into the casserole dish with the rest of the ingredients. After he drains the broccoli and stirs it into the mix, you quickly add the topping before standing back to admire your work.

"Now you'll want to cook it," Daniel tells you, torn between exasperation and amusement, when you don't move to do anything else. You quickly grab the dish and put it in the oven with an embarrassed mutter of, "Oh, right."

"It should be ready in roughly thirty-five minutes," he says, leaning back against the counter. You nod and presumably set the timer on your phone before coming to stand beside him. Daniel looks at you, wondering if perhaps he should say anything, but then decides against it and looks away from you. A silence that's oddly more comfortable than awkward fills the kitchen then, but he finds that he doesn't really mind.

"What happened?" you ask, quietly, ending the silence, looking up at him with wide eyes. At first he's confused as to why and what you're asking, but then your gaze falls briefly to his arm and then back up. His sleeve has ridden up, he realizes, quickly yanking the fabric back down to cover the scar there. 

Daniel looks up from his arm and to you, and then away with a sigh. Should he tell you? What would he tell you? Does he _want_ to tell you? 

"I'm sure you know that I'd been shot that night, and where, but as for this arm, along with my legs, I'm not really sure. I can only assume that my arm and both legs were taken," he begins, only to have every single thought immediately leave his mind when your fingertips meet the scar on his arm. For the briefest of seconds, it's as if all of his circuits have shorted out from the sensation of being touched, even if the touch is as small as this, and he looks at you in surprise. He hadn't felt like this earlier, or at least not to this extent, when he'd been connected with Simon. Is it because you're human? Is it the spot that you're touching? Or is it _you_?

_Do you want anything?_ plays through his head once more, and this time he allows himself to mentally answer _yes_, though he's not entirely sure if he wants you to touch him more or if he wants you to pull your hand away. Before he's able to come to a decision, you're pulling your hand away from him. As your hand falls to your side, he finally finishes, "For parts."

"I'm so sorry, Daniel," you say, looking up at him with wide eyes. There's a look of sincerity on your face that gives him pause, along with an odd look of pity in your gaze. He feels a flash of anger, then, because while he may not know what he does want, he does know that he doesn't want pity, not from Simon or from you or from anyone else.

"I am too," he says in return, forcing his shaking hand into a fist at his side. Your gaze softens as you say, "I can handle things from here, if you want to go back to your room."

Daniel simply nods, and as he makes his way towards the living room, you say, "Goodnight, Daniel."

"Goodnight," he tells you in return, pausing in his doorway just long enough to watch you turn back to the oven before continuing on his way back to his bedroom. Once inside the bedroom, Daniel pulls the door shut and stops in front of the mirror. With a sigh, he closes his eyes and deactivates his skin. When he opens his eyes, he's met with a face that's his own, but also different. The eyes are the same, his LED still blinks blue, and the line where the bullet wound had been repaired is still visible, but everything else is unfamiliar, even if it is _his_.

This is how the Phillipses had seen him, he realizes, his reflection's LED turning yellow, as just plastic and metal and wires, as just a _machine_.

Without looking away from his reflection's eyes, Daniel reaches down and pulls one of the dresser drawers open. From there, he pulls out a pair of scissors. He glances down at them and then back up at his reflection.

As he brings the scissors up to his forehead, his thirium pump beats faster and faster within his chest. He uses the point of the scissors to lift up first the edge of his LED and then to remove it completely. It falls from his forehead, but he catches it and holds it up to look at it. The light shines no more, and as he studies it, the beat of his thirium pump slowly returns to normal. He reactivates his skin and then drops the now defunct LED into the open dresser drawer. 

_Even if he is just a machine_, Daniel thinks to himself, _without the LED blinking on his forehead, he looks almost human_.


	4. The Complications of Compromises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today is the first day since he was brought to live with you that he's come out of standby to an empty house, Daniel realizes as he walks out of his bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just like before, I'm so sorry for how long this took! Life has been busy, but I hope I can have the next chapter up sooner! As always, I hope you all like it!

Today is the first day since he was brought to live with you that he's come out of standby to an empty house, Daniel realizes as he walks out of his bedroom. For whatever reason, this feels somehow significant, in a way, even if he did spend those two days hidden away in his bedroom. He stops to refill Snuffles's food bowl upon seeing that the food inside is growing low, even if Snuffles isn't here to beg, and then continues on to the living room. 

Daniel shuffles into the living room as quickly as he can manage to, before proceeding to flop onto one of the chairs in a, in his opinion, very undignified manner. You won't be home until much later this evening, and Snuffles is asleep on the couch, so Daniel supposes that it's up to him to rise to the challenge, because it is a challenge, of amusing himself, especially when he's not yet used to needing to be _entertained_. 

Oddly enough, as Daniel sits there and ponders this, he finds that he almost misses you. Or, rather, he misses your company. Or, at the very least, he amends, he misses having company.

Those two days he'd spent alone in his room had been one thing, but now that he's been here for longer, Daniel doesn't think that he can exactly content himself with his thoughts and his thoughts alone. Instead, he does a brief scan of the living room to find something to occupy himself with. After only a brief moment, his gaze lands on the book he'd started reading the previous day. With a sigh, he picks it up and begins to read.

The words on the pages stop making sense two chapters in, and with a sigh, Daniel closes the book and sets it aside. He runs a brief diagnostic to to make sure that everything is still operational, or at least as much as everything about him can be. To his surprise, the diagnostics report comes back just as it had the first time he'd ran one after he'd woken up, with no errors to be found. Not in his eyes, not in his arms, not in his legs, and not anywhere else either. He must just be distracted, then, he decides, and looks around the living room in hopes of finding something else to entertain himself with.

**Play with Snuffles**, his system prompts, but he pushes that one aside because Snuffles is still asleep in the chair, belly up and paws twitching, and he'd hate to wake her.

**Watch TV**, his system suggests instead, but after Daniel spends longer than he'd like to simply flipping through the channels without finding anything interesting, he simply pushes this suggestion away too. He sighs, leans back into the chair, and tries to think of something to do to remain occupied, because he doesn't particularly feel like simply musing or even going so far as to re-enter standby mode.

**Do the laundry**, his system finally suggests, and with another, though more reluctant, sigh, Daniel stands and makes his way from the living room, down the hallway, and back to his bedroom. He had thought about washing his clothes the prior day, after all, so he figures that there's no time line the present to do something about it.

As he walks inside and passes in front of the mirror, he realizes that he's still wearing the clothes he'd worn the previous day. Quickly, he changes out of these clothes and into a new set of clothes, before gathering all of his discarded clothes, from the vibrant orange shirt he'd first woken up on to the most recent outfit before making his way through the house and to the laundry room. Once there, he opens the door and steps inside before pausing to survey his surroundings. 

Similarly to your kitchen appliances, the washer and dryer are both outdated by almost a decade, but a quick scan reveals them both to be fully operational and completely functional. With a nod of almost-approval, Daniel walks closer and sets his worn clothing down on top of the closed lid of the dryer. He looks at the settings on the washing machine, opens the lids, and puts his clothes into the drum, only to then realize that he doesn't know where the laundry detergent is because he forgot to find out the location of it during his scan. With a sigh, he begins to look around in search of the bottle.

There's a door connecting the laundry room to your bedroom, Daniel notices when he turns to continue his search, but only because of the fact that the aforementioned door currently happens to be open. Near the door is a shelf on which a bottle of off-brand lavender-scented laundry detergent happens to sit, along with a matching bottle of fabric softener, but Daniel finds his gaze straying from what he'd originally been looking for in favor of landing upon the full laundry hamper that's in your room but also in a direct line of sight from where he stands.

**Get the clothes**, his system prompts, and angrily, Daniel forces the suggestion away. Even so, he can't stop looking at the hamper practically overflowing with your clothes. Why haven't you washed them yet? Have you simply forgotten? Surely you don't rewear your dirty clothes? Have you been too busy to-

With a sigh, Daniel moves away from the washing machine and towards your room. He's not doing this for you, he insists to himself as he draws closer to your room, and even as he bends to pick up your laundry basket. After briefly glancing over your clothes to make sure that there are no articles of clothing in colors that would need to be washed separately, Daniel storms back into the laundry room and empties the hamper into the washing machine before setting the now-empty hamper aside. 

After all, he supposes as he pours laundry detergent and fabric softener into the correct spots, it is more efficient and cost-effective to do both your laundry and his at the same time. With a sigh, he closes the lid and starts the washing machine before ambling back into the living room to wait out the wash cycle. Snuffles is awake now, so he finds the laser pointer from the previous before sitting down and proceeding to use it to play with her. 

Just as she had yesterday, Snuffles immediately leaps into action, and Daniel finds himself unable to hold back his smile at the sight. Much like he did the previous day, he points the laser pointer in various places around the living room and watches in amused fascination as Snuffles thunders after the little red dot. He continues to do so until Snuffles gets tired, and then picks back up the book he'd been attempting to read earlier until the washing machine falls silent. With a sigh, he sets the book aside, stands up from his seat, and ambles back into the laundry room and over to the washing machine. Upon finding that the clothes are, in fact, done being washed, he opens the lid.

_Hopefully you won't take this as an invasion of privacy_, Daniel thinks to himself as he moves the clothes from the washer to the dryer, but finds himself more amused than worried by the thought. Laundry is one of the tasks his model was specifically programmed with, along with being something that he'd done countless times for the Phillipses, and now he's worried that you won't be happy with him for doing it for you. True, he hadn't asked you first and you hadn't asked him either, but he still can't help but to marvel at the novelty of _choosing_ to do something that he was made to do, without even being ordered to do so. 

Once he finishes transferring the clothes over, he closes and starts the dryer before making his way back into the living room. As he sits down, he checks the time as sees that it's currently **12:16 pm, Monday, March 7, 2039**, which means that there are still a few hours to go before you'll be home from work. He picks the book up only to set it down again before deciding to turn the television on instead. 

Just as he had done earlier, Daniel finds himself flipping boredly flipping through the channels before settling on the news. Nothing particularly interesting seems to have happened lately, and he finds himself almost glad to turn the television off again when it's time to head back into the laundry room and take the clothes out of the dryer. Folding your clothes seems both too personal and too helpful, so he simply pulls out his clothes from the dryer and sets them aside before dumping all of your clothes into your laundry basket. 

He'll just set the basket on your bed, he decides, and proceeds to do so before returning to the laundry room to fold and collect his own clothing. He puts all of his clean clothing back in the drawer with his few other articles of clothing, but leaves out one shirt and one pair of pants to wear tomorrow. After he's done here, he returns to the living room, the chair, and the book.

Even now that he's actively focusing on the book, he's not able to read as quickly as he should, and that realization annoys him. The tremor in his arm makes it difficult to hold the book steady, and he occasionally has to blink several times to refocus his vision, so by the time you come home at **6:07 pm, Monday, March 7, 2039**, he's only managed to make it three fourths of the way through the book. With a sigh, he closes it and sets it aside just as you open the door and walk inside. You must've gotten off of work earlier the day that he'd first been brought here, he notes to himself, and then says, "Good evening."

"Hi, Daniel," you tell him, taking your coat off and hanging it up near the front door before calling a greeting to Snuffles as well. You remove your shoes as well and then make your way farther into the living room. Daniel isn't really sure where your original destination is, because instead of continuing on the way that you were, you freeze midway through the room to pause and look at him.

"Your LED," you say, surprise clear in your voice as you blink at him, eyebrows drawn together.

"I removed it," he states, simply, deciding against offering up any sort of explanation.

"You look nice," you tell him, more sincerely than he's used to, before quickly continuing, "I mean, you did already look nice before, but this suits you too."

"Thank you," he says, unsure of what else to say, but flattered nonetheless. You chuckle then, almost nervously, before saying, "Oh, and before I forget, I just want you to know that the casserole was really good. I really appreciate you helping me make it."

"I'm glad you liked it," Daniel says, allowing himself to feel some amount of irrational pride at your words.

"I do have another favor to ask of you," you begin, and he all but freezes in place, looking at you cautiously, all of his pride dissipating, sure that you're going to ask him to actually make something now. Instead, you continue, "If it's not too much trouble, would you mind writing down the recipe for me?"

He nods, suddenly relieved, and replies, "I can do that."

"Thank you, Daniel," you tell him, smiling. "Well, I'm hungry, so I'm off to go eat some of that casserole now."

"Okay," he says, allowing himself a small smile. You return the smile and then turn and, after stopping to pet Snuffles, walk into the dining room, and presumably then to the kitchen. Daniel watches you go, and simply sits back down in the chair to continue his attempt at reading it.

You walk back into the living room at **7:03 pm, Monday, March 7, 2039**, and Daniel looks up just in time to see you sit on the couch and turn on the television. You meet his gaze and smile at him. He tentatively returns the smile and then drops his gaze back to the book.

Only when he finally successfully finishes the book he's been trying to read does he realize that you haven't yet moved from your spot on the couch, even though it's currently **11:49 pm, Monday, March 7, 2039**. From what he's noticed, on the days where he hasn't already entered standby mode, you're usually at least in your bedroom by an hour earlier than the present time. Now, however, here you still are, and sound asleep at that.

Before, whenever Emma would fall asleep in the living room, he would simply pick her up and carry her to her bedroom, tuck her in bed, and then return to whatever it was Mr. and Mrs. Phillips wanted him to do. Now, with you, it's not nearly as simple as that. Daniel finds himself hesitant to even try to attempt to carry you to your bedroom for two different reasons. 

The first is the fact that it'd be too personal, too intimate, because Emma had been his sister, his daughter, his friend, and you're _you_. Not that there's anything wrong with you, of course, but he's not even sure if he'd consider you a friend, or if you'd consider him a friend. A housemate, certainly, and maybe something resembling a friend, but not close enough for him to hold you in his arms. The second reason is a lot simpler, if for no other reason than that he's unsure of the logistics of the possibility of him carrying you. You're a lot bigger than Emma, because of course you are, you're not a child, after all, and he hadn't been damaged then, when he carried Emma to bed. Now, he's unsure if his legs would even be able to support the extra weight, and he'd prefer to spare himself the embarrassment of falling with you.

He'll leave you where you are, then, Daniel decides, and let you sleep here. Not long after he makes his decision, his gaze falls upon the blanket draped over the back of the other chair in the living room.

He's doing this out of common courtesy, he tells himself as he stands up, and not because he cares about you. No matter the reason, though, he still finds himself picking up the blanket and draping it over your sleeping form. After doing so, he steps back and finds himself wondering just what he should do now. He's finished reading the book, so he could go to his room and enter standby mode, but for once he finds himself reluctant to do so. After all, you had asked him to write down the casserole recipe for you, and he hasn't gotten around to doing it yet.

He can skip entering standby mode for one night, he decides, and instead walks over to the chest of drawers near the entryway to the dining room. Daniel looks through the drawers as quietly as he can, taking care not disturb either you or Snuffles, who is currently asleep on top of the chest of drawers, until he finds an empty five-subject spiral notebook and a pen. Snuffles lifts her head just long enough the fix him with a curious stare before laying her head back down and falling asleep again. 

Satisfied with his find, Daniel returns to his seat. Once there, and after he turns the television off, he opens the notebook to the first page and begins writing down the ingredients and instructions for the casserole he'd helped you make, taking care to write with his neatest **CyberLife Sans**. 

Instead of tearing the page out to give to you like he'd originally planned to, he finds himself instead wondering if he should transcribe more recipes for you instead. But then he'd be helping you, wouldn't he? Or maybe not, he decides, because much like when he'd done the laundry earlier today, this would benefit not only you, but him as well, if for no other reason than that he wouldn't necessarily have to assist you in cooking the way that he had with the casserole from yesterday. With his decision now made, Daniel turns to the next page in the notebook and begins to write.

At **6:23 am, Tuesday, March 8, 2039**, you finally begin to stir. Daniel clicks the pen shut and closes the notebook, which is now filled with two hundred and thirty-seven recipes, complete with detailed instructions, that you'll hopefully like.

"Daniel?" you ask, peering blearily at him. After stifling a chuckle, he replies, "I am indeed Daniel."

"What time is it?" you ask, yawning, eyes closing again. Daniel answers you, and at his words, your eyes suddenly fly open. He doesn't quite manage to stifle his chuckle this time, but you don't even seem to notice, instead asking, somewhat exasperatedly, "Did I really fall asleep on the couch?"

"Yes," he replies, simply, only to consider after he says it that perhaps you'd actually intended for the question to be rhetorical. You move to sit up, only to freeze when you finally seem to notice the blanket covering you. You look at him in surprise as you ask, "Did you cover me up?"

"Perhaps," Daniel replies, with a noncommittal shrug.

"You're sweet," you tell him, sitting up from where you lay on the couch and stretching. The blanket falls down as you do so, part of it falling off of the couch and onto the floor. Normally, the remnants of his housekeeping programming would've likely taken issue with that, but right now Daniel finds himself occupied with your words instead. 

First he was _cute_, and now he's _sweet_. Daniel resists the urge to look up the definition of the word sweet, and instead allows himself a moment to enjoy the compliments, and the oddly flattering feeling that accompanied them, before standing. He makes his way over to you, ignoring the unusual but familiar stiffness in his legs, and holds out the notebook to you. You stare up at him with wide eyes, and he quickly explains, "I wrote down the casserole recipe like you asked, along with a few others."

"Thank you so much, Daniel," you say, taking the notebook from him with a smile before standing and saying, "I need to hurry and get ready for work right now, but I promise I'll look at this later!"

"Of course," he says, and steps aside to let you past him. He watches as you hurry down the hallway and disappear into your bedroom before he turns and walks back to his seat. 

As he sits, Snuffles decides to wake up as well, but spares him merely a glance before stretching and hopping down from her perch atop the chest of drawers. He watches as she makes her way into the hallway and then turns his gaze to the television. He turns it back on and idly flips through the channels, but soon finds himself interrupted by the sound of your voice from the direction of the hallway as you ask, "You did the laundry?"

"Yes," he replies, simply, turning his head to look at you before deciding that he'd have an easier time seeing you if he stood up, and then doing so. You come into the living room, dressed in clothes similar to the ones you'd come home in yesterday, and sound almost apologetic as you say, "You know you didn't have to do that."

"I know," he says, because, as he tells himself again, he only did your laundry as well as his because it was the efficient thing to do. You straighten your shirt as you tell him, "I just don't want you to feel obligated to do anything for me, for any reason."

"I," he begins, pausing for a moment. No one has ever told him that he's not obligated to do things before, and he's not sure exactly how to process this, even if it is something that he's told himself over and over again ever since he was brought to live with you. Finally, he finishes, "I know, and I appreciate you saying that."

"So, really, thank you for doing the laundry, Daniel," you say, smiling at him as you walk closer to him, and then you hug him. Daniel stumbles a little, in surprise, but your arms around him prevent him from falling. Instead, he simply stands there, unsure of how to react. 

This isn't the first time anyone has hugged him, because sometimes Emma would, before, but she was the only person to ever do so. Until now, that is, but even so this hug feels feels different somehow. This _is_ different, because that had been Emma, because she had a lot smaller than you, because he had never had to question her affection towards him, because he had been her caretaker and _the coolest android in the world_, and this is-

_This is nice_, Daniel finally thinks, and hesitantly raises his arms to return the hug. He feels a little like he did yesterday, when you'd touched his arm, but strangely, enough, not to the same extent. He's not sure if it's the lack of skin to skin contact or if it's just because he's more concerned with the feeling of you in his arms than he is anything else, but either way, he's not really sure if he cares about the cause right now.

Eventually, you begin to pull away, and as you do so, Daniel finds that he feels curiously _warm_ in a way he's never felt before. Reluctantly, he lets you go, and as you step completely away from him, Daniel finds himself reflexively grabbing onto the chair to keep from falling, because his legs are strangely weak. This time, however, he's not entirely sure the cause is disuse and sloppy repair work. 

You don't seem to notice, or at least don't give any indication that you did, and instead ask, "How about you and I go out and do something this Saturday? Other than grocery shopping, I mean. As thanks for the laundry and the recipes."

"All right," he says, after a moment, and you smile at him. You take another step back as you say, "We can talk about what to do later, after I get off work. I need to leave now or else I'll be late."

"See you then," he says, letting go of the chair to stand up straight again, relieve that the feeling of weakness seems to have passed, or at the very least, lessened.

"Later, Daniel," you tell him, still smiling, and then turn and leave. Now seems like a good time to enter standby mode, he decides, and returns to his bedroom to do just that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, I hadn't actually played dbh at the time that I started writing this, but a few weeks ago I finally got to play it and just...nobody warned me just how much more painful actually being the one responsible for Daniel's death would be than just, like...watching videos on YouTube. But it _is_ very painful and I still feel bad RIP.


	5. The Complications of Cookbooks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mere moments after Daniel exits standby mode at **6:13 pm, Tuesday, March 8, 2039** a pained shout and loud expletive echo throughout the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so, so sorry for how long this took! I'd meant to have this finished much sooner, but things have been...rough lately, and I haven't felt much like writing. But! I'm trying to get back into it, and for now, I hope you guys like this chapter!

Mere moments after Daniel exits standby mode at **6:13 pm, Tuesday, March 8, 2039** a pained shout and loud expletive echo throughout the house. He scrambles off of the bed as quickly as he can, but falls to the floor only seconds after he gets off of the bed. One of his legs has locked up, he realizes as he tries and fails to stand. 

In frustration, he hits his fist against his thigh, again and again and again until finally the pressure lessens and he can pull himself unsteadily to his feet. He's surprised but not ungrateful that doing such a thing worked, and as quickly as he can, he makes his way towards the source of the sound. The sound came from farther than this hallway or the rooms attached to it, and he finds the living room empty except for Snuffles, so he continues on to the kitchen.

As Daniel finally makes it to the doorway of the kitchen, he asks, upon seeing you leaning over the sink and clutching your hand, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," you say, turning around as you continue, "I burnt my fingers, but I'm fine."

_So that's why you'd screamed_, Daniel realizes, and asks, "How did this happen?"

"The burner I'm using on this old stove didn't want to stay lit, and as I was doing relighting it manually the flames flared out and caught my fingers," you explain with a small sigh, releasing your hand from your own grip and giving it a slight shake.

Minor injury diagnoses and treatment is something he's particularly good at, no doubt due to one of his primary original functions being that of caretaker to a child, and as much as he still tells himself that he doesn't want to outright help you in any way, he also doesn't want you to hurt. With a sigh of his own, Daniel asks, "May I see?"

You nod and hold your hand out to him. He takes your hand in his own and examines your fingers. His medical knowledge doesn't extend to more serious injuries, but he knows enough to be able to tell that the burned spots on your index and middle finger are barely even first degree, and should heal fairly quickly, even with minimal medical attention.

"You'll live," he says, suddenly acutely aware of the feeling of your hand in his and how long he's been holding your hand. He lets go of your hand and adds, as you laugh, "But you might need some ointment to help with that."

"I think there's some in the bathroom," you say, brows furrowing together in thought. "Will you watch this pot for me? I'm making one of the recipes from the cookbook you made me, and I just need the noodles to not boil over."

"I can do that," he says, grudgingly, and moves to stand by the stove. He glances down at the pan only to immediately look back up at you in slight confusion as he asks, "Why are you using dinosaur pasta?"

"Because it's _fun_," you reply, completely seriously, and Daniel can't help but to laugh. You leave the kitchen then, chuckling as well, and Daniel turns his gaze back to the stove. There are ingredients scattered on the counter that look as if they could be used in a cheese sauce, so he can only assume that you're making macaroni and cheese, presumably using one of the recipes that he'd written down for you. 

Just as he's in the middle of cross-referencing the ingredients on the counter with the ingredients of the recipes he knows, you return to the kitchen. Your fingers are bandaged and you smile as you remark, "Well, I see that there were no catastrophes while I was gone."

"The dinosaurs managed to survive this time. At least for now," Daniel replies, allowing himself a small smile as you laugh. You check on the pasta before returning to the ingredients on the counter. He hesitates where he stands, torn between staying in the kitchen and returning to his room. However, before he has the chance to decide one way or another, you say, glancing over your shoulder to smile at him, "Thank you again for the recipes, Daniel. I was looking through them earlier and just got so excited to try something that I thought I'd go ahead and make something simple tonight."

"You're welcome," he says, looking away from you as he begins to feel oddly warm inside from the knowledge that he'd managed to do something for you, even in spite of what he's told himself to do, and something that had _excited_ you, at that.

"Speaking of cookbooks," you say, pulling him from his thoughts as you continue, "I found some of my grandma's old ones, and I thought you might enjoy reading them, so I dropped them off in your room while you were asleep."

"Thank you. I'll have a look through them later," Daniel replies, leaning back against the counter and watching as you light one of the other burners on the stove before placing another pan there to combine the ingredients for the sauce inside of it. Finally, his recipe cross-referencing finishes, and he finds that he's narrowed it down to the simplest macaroni and cheese recipe he knows. This one had been one of Emma's favorites, he remembers, regret flooding his system.

"I wonder how this would taste with garlic added in," you muse, and Daniel is pulled back to the present by your words only to look at you in confusion the second they sink in. With a frown, he says, "But the recipe doesn't call for garlic."

"Well, Daniel, we're experimenting," you say, flashing him a smile before snagging a shaker of garlic powder from the nearby spice rack and sprinkling some into the sauce mixture while he watches you, slightly perplexed. You place the garlic powder back in its previous spot and resume stirring. He watches you, concerned, until finally you step back, turn off both of the burners, and happily announce, "Done!"

"May I?" Daniel asks, after a moment's contemplation, with a gesture towards the pot of cheese sauce.

"Oh! Sure," you say, stepping aside to let him closer to the stove. His sense of taste is rudimentary at best, really only good enough to classify foods as edible or inedible, but not precise enough to pick up on individual flavors. Nevertheless, he reaches out with his steady hand, runs a finger along the side of the pan in order to collect sauce on one of his fingers, and then brings his hand up to his mouth. He opens his mouth just wide enough to swipe the sauce onto his tongue, and waits close to two seconds for the results of the sauce's analysis. 

His systems classify it as **edible**, and he nods in grudging approval. As Daniel lowers his hand to his side, he notices the odd way that you're looking at him, with your brows drawn slightly together, lips parted just slightly, and an unfamiliar emotion in your gaze.

"What?" he asks, feeling strangely defensive.

"Nothing," you reply, blinking, the expression vanishing as you ask, "So, what's your verdict?"

"Not bad," he says, with a shrug. You smile and say, "I'll take that as a compliment."

Daniel returns the smile, albeit not to the same extent, before stepping back to allow you to finish making the macaroni and cheese. He leans against the counter and simply watches in silence as you finish making your dinner. Before long, you're flicking off the heat of the burner and moving away from the stove to grab a plate from one of the cabinets.

"Oh!" you exclaim, just as he begins to turn away. Instead, he stops and turns back towards you. 

_Have you injured yourself again?_ he wonders, and takes a half a step towards you.

"I almost forgot, but about this Saturday," you begin, and Daniel steps back again as you fish out a fork from one of the drawers. He's oddly relieved by your words, and he quickly reminds himself to not be so concerned about you. You turn around, fork in hand, and continue, "I was thinking that I could get my grocery shopping out of the way after I get off work on Friday, so that on Saturday you and I can go clothes shopping."

As he stands there, considering this, you chuckle nervously and add, "But only if you want to go clothes shopping, of course! If there's something else you'd rather do, that's fine, it's just that I get a little extra on my paycheck this week and I thought you might want a little bit more variety in your clothes."

"Clothes shopping sounds good to me," he finally says, with a small nod. It would be nice to expand his wardrobe, he concedes, if for no other reason than to truly experience having the choice to pick out his own clothing, instead of wearing a uniform or borrowed garish shirts. Though, he does have to admit, the clothes you gave him aren't terrible, limited though his current options may be. You simply smile at him in response. 

Your smile is a broad, pleased smile and something about the way your eyes are shining makes him feel _odd_, for lack of a better way to describe what you're doing to him. After a moment's silence that is quickly becoming awkward, Daniel shifts his weight from foot to foot and says, "I'll leave you to your dinner, then."

"All right," you say, still smiling as you add, "See you later, Daniel."

He nods in response and then leaves the kitchen. Snuffles is eating from her food dish in the hallway, and after pausing briefly to pet her, Daniel continues on to his bedroom. The cookbooks are on the dresser just as you said they would be, but there's something else he wants to take care of first.

The repair and replacement of his legs and arms should've been as simply as inserting part _a_ into part _b_, and yet the end result shows that it apparently wasn't that simple, unfortunately for him. 

With a sigh, Daniel pulls his pants down just far enough down his thighs to expose the scars before sitting down to better examine them. The white line on his left thigh stands out just as starkly as it had the first time he'd seen the scars, but the one on his right thigh flickers faintly between smooth skin and white plastic. He stares at it, slightly perplexed, before remembering that this is the thigh he'd hit earlier. Taking the leg out and then plugging it back in could possibly fix this problem, then, if it's something so simple as his legs being incorrectly inserted, but Daniel doesn't want to dare to risk doing that on his own, not with his arm as unsteady as it currently is. 

He needs help, he grudgingly admits to himself as he stands and angrily yanks his pants back up. He supposes he could ask Simon when he comes by on Sunday, but that would be humiliating, to have his flaws bared to someone just like him, only undamaged. No, it's already bad enough that Simon knows that he's damaged. Daniel doesn't need him to know the full extent of which. 

Or he could ask _you_. That would still be humiliating, but perhaps less so. You've seen the scar on his arm. You've _touched_ the scar on his arm. Or perhaps more humiliating than asking Simon, because you're human and you'd looked at him with pity, and he doesn't want pity, not from anyone and especially not from you. 

He grabs the cookbooks from atop the dresser and angrily tosses them onto the bed. Damn you and your cookbooks and your kindness and your smiles. Damn you for helping him and damn him for being weak. 

With a sigh, Daniel sits down on the bed. After a moment, he glances over his shoulder and at the cookbooks. They're here, so he might as well read them, he reasons. 

He lays down on his stomach with the pile of cookbooks before him, and after pulling them closer, he begins to simply glance over the covers. The cookbooks range from modern and useful to outdated and almost incomprehensible, but he grudgingly appreciates the gesture of you giving them to him nonetheless. There's even a book of jam and jelly recipes from the early nineteen hundreds that he flips through in slightly horrified wonder. A few of the recipes in it do turn out to be useful, surprisingly enough, so he scans them into his memory and then sets the book aside. He grabs one of the other cookbooks and repeats the same process with it, of reading and scanning, and then does the same with the next cookbook after that. 

At **7:02 am, Wednesday, March 9, 2039**, a knock sounds on Daniel's door. He looks up from the cookbook he'd been reading through, the last of the ones you'd given him, and instead turns his gaze towards the sound. After closing the cookbook and pulling himself up into a sitting position, he calls out, "You can come in." 

"Good morning, Daniel," you say, smiling at him as you open the door and step inside. 

"Good morning," he replies, watching you as you make your way over to him before sitting down beside him on the bed. You reach out, running your fingers over the cover of one of the books, before turning back to him and saying, "I'm about to head to work, but first I just wanted to ask what you thought of the cookbooks." 

"They were," he begins, but then stops to think for a moment, wondering what a suitable word is that could describe them all, even the strange jelly one, and finally decides on, "Interesting. I enjoyed reading them." 

"Good. I just want you to be comfortable here, so I'm glad you enjoyed them," you tell him. As you do so, you reach out and gently lay your hand over his for the briefest of moments, but it's still long enough for him to look up at you in surprise. 

"Thank you," he finally manages to say, and looks away from you. He feels warm, oddly so, and in a way he's never felt before. The closest he can think of feeling like this before is the heat of anger, but this is different than that. Before he can even try to figure out what this warmth is from, you're standing up. He looks back at you at the sound of the bed creaking, just in time to see you smile as you say, "There's no need to thank me. It's what anyone decent would do, and I like to think I'm decent, or at least I hope I am." 

"So far, you seem to be," he responds, and you laugh before standing and saying, "Thank you for that, Daniel. I really should be going now, but I'll see you after I get home from work." 

"Until then," he replies. You walk to the door before pausing and turning back to look at him as you say, "Oh, and Daniel? You should spend some time outside today. It's supposed to be a lovely day." 

He can hear the sound of your footsteps and then the sound of the front door opening and closing. After you leave, Daniel picks the books back up, and sighs in relief when he manages to stand without issue, before returning the stack of cookbooks to their former place atop the dresser. While he's by the dresser, he takes the opportunity to change into a different set of clothing, which this time consists of a simple blue shirt and a pair of loose pants. He hurriedly makes his way past the mirror, out the door, and to the hallway. 

He refills Snuffles's food dish as he passes, earning himself a grateful headbutt from the cat herself, and then continues on to the living room. Once there, he takes a seat in his usual chair to stop and consider what he wants to do today. The thought of watching something on the television isn't an appealing one, and the thought of finding a chore to do is even less appealing, so he supposes he could spend some time outside today, like you'd suggested he do. 

A brief check of the weather forecast confirms that today is supposed to be sunny and mild, and with the confirmation that bad weather is highly unlikely to occur today, Daniel stands up from the chair. He's never actually been in your backyard before, but he's seen glimpses of it through the windows in the kitchen. The kitchen is where he heads now, to get to the door leading to the yard. 

After nudging Snuffles back from the door with an outstretched foot, Daniel opens the back door and steps outside before quickly shutting it before Snuffles can attempt to dart outside. Once the door is completely shut, he turns and looks around. The deck is a covered one and home to a swinging bench and a few assorted potted plants, and the yard itself is more spacious than he would expect for a house of this side. The yard is enclosed in a high wooden fence that needs boards replaced in more than a few spots, and is practically empty except for the small shed near the back. Carefully, he walks down the steps of the porch and makes his way over to the shed, curious to see what lies within it. The doors aren't locked, but even so, the doors stick slightly, so he has to use more force than he'd been expecting to pry them open. 

After all this effort, he finds that there's nothing inside, really, other than gardening tools, a bag of soil, and an old lawn mower. The only thing of note is what looks like three cans of paint in the same shade as what covers the outside of the house. He files that information away for later before closing the doors of the shed and making his way over to the porch swing and having a seat. 

You and the weather forecast were right, he notes to himself as he leans back into the seat, clasping his hands in his lap and kicking his legs just enough for the swing to move slightly, because today really is a lovely day. 


End file.
